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This is the story of a couple of farmers who grew up on separate farms and fell in love.

Four years after they met, the couple — Zeke and Hillary Stecher — and their kids are running their Mantua farm and a new produce market on Route 45.

“We are completely farmers. No part-time jobs. We farm. And that’s the only thing we file on out income tax,” said Hillary Stecher, who runs Country Hills, the Bridgeton Pike roadside market, surrounded by acres of blooming zinnias on Stecher Farms land.

The Stechers’ farm has been in Zeke's family since 1905, and until this year its produce has been sold wholesale to grocery stores.

Their farm even sells to other local roadside produce markets. In fact, that’s how Zeke and Hillary met.

“Farmers can’t grow everything, and they have to go to other farmers for produce,” she said, giggling as she retold the story of the Stechers’ farm romance.

Hillary grew up on a farm in Burlington County. Zeke’s Mantua Township farm has been in the family for more than a century.

Four years ago, Hillary was running her own produce stand.

“I was in need of some produce I didn’t have at the time, and I got directed to him,” she recalled.

They were together for three years before they were married in 2012.

The Bridgeton Pike produce market has been a blending of the couple’s strengths, Hillary added.

“When you wholesale, some sort of retail market goes hand-in-hand,” she said. “My husband likes to be out in the field and get dirty. I like to deal with the public. That’s where we came up with this idea.”

The couple aren’t running the farm alone.

Their children — Zach, 16, Maverick, 12, and Kiera, 4 — are “very active in the farming,” she added.

Zach is in charge of irrigating the fields, and Maverick handles rototilling to keep the weeds down. Both boys help pick and pack the produce. Kiera helps her mother cut and arrange the zinnias growing around the farm stand.

“We’re not believers in allowance. They’re learning life lessons — work ethic before money,” Hillary said. “They work extremely hard.”

In the next several week, South Jersey will be at the height of the growing season, when watermelon, cantaloupe, eggplant, peppers, yellow squash and zucchini, peaches, tomatoes and nectarines will be ripe and plentiful.

Country Hill’s market, stocked with fresh home grown produce from the Stechers’ farm, is open daily from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. The market is located at 895 Bridgeton Pike in Mantua Township.